IT IS THE moment rock fans thought would never happen. On July 4th Oasis, the greatest British band of their generation, will go on stage for the first time in 16 years. Such a thing seemed impossible given the group’s spectacular combustion in 2009, after a fight between Liam Gallagher, the lead singer, and his brother, Noel, the main songwriter. In the intervening years the siblings fired shots at each other in the press and on social media. (Noel famously described Liam as “the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”) But now, they claim, “The guns have fallen silent.”
IT IS THE moment rock fans thought would never happen. On July 4th Oasis, the greatest British band of their generation, will go on stage for the first time in 16 years. Such a thing seemed impossible given the group’s spectacular combustion in 2009, after a fight between Liam Gallagher, the lead singer, and his brother, Noel, the main songwriter. In the intervening years the siblings fired shots at each other in the press and on social media. (Noel famously described Liam as “the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”) But now, they claim, “The guns have fallen silent.”
When Julia Roberts gets in Richard Gere’s Lotus Esprit as it stutters along Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990 film Pretty Woman, Germans heard Daniela Hoffmann, not Roberts, exclaim: “Man, this baby must corner like it’s on rails!” In Spain, Mercè Montalà voiced the line, while French audiences heard it from Céline Monsarrat. In the years that followed, Hollywood’s sweetheart would sound different in cinemas around the world but to native audiences she would sound the same.
The voice actors would gain some notoriety in their home countries, but today, their jobs are being threatened by artificial intelligence. The use of AI was a major point of dispute during the Hollywood actors’ strike in 2023, when both writers and actors expressed concern that it could undermine their roles, and fought for federal legislation to protect their work. Not long after, more than 20 voice acting guilds, associations and unions formed the United Voice Artists coalition to campaign under the slogan “Don’t steal our voices”. In Germany, home to “the Oscars of dubbing”, artists warned that their jobs were at risk with the rise of films dubbed with AI trained using their voices, without their consent.
“It’s war for us,” says Patrick Kuban, a voice actor and organiser with the dubbing union Voix Off, who along with the French Union of Performing Artists started the campaign #TouchePasMaVF (“don’t touch my French version”). They want to see dubbing added to France’s l’exception culturelle, a government policy that defines cultural goods as part of national identity and needing special protection from the state.
Dubbing isn’t just a case of translating a film into native languages, explains Kuban, it’s adapted “to the French humour, to include references, culture and emotion”. As a result, AI could put an estimated 12,500 jobs at risk in France: including writers, translators, sound engineers, as well as the voice actors themselves, according to a study by the Audiens Group in 2023.
‘I don’t want my voice to be used to say whatever someone wants’ … a voiceover artist in a recording studio. Photograph: Edward Olive/Getty Images
“Humans are able to bring to [these roles]: experience, trauma and emotion, context and background and relationships,” adds Tim Friedlander, a US-based voice actor, studio owner, musician, and president of the National Association of Voice Actors. “All of the things that we as humans connect with. You can have a voice that sounds angry, but if it doesn’t feel angry, you’re going to have a disconnect in there.”
Since the introduction of sound cinema in the late 1920s and 1930s, dubbing has grown to be an industry worth more than $4.04bn (£2.96bn) globally. It was first adopted in Europe by authoritarian leaders, who wanted to remove negative references to their governments and promote their languages. Mussolini banned foreign languages in movies entirely, a policy that catalysed a preference for dubbed rather than subtitled films in the country. Today, 61% of German viewers and 54% of French ones also opt for dubbed movies, while Disney dubs their productions into more than 46 languages. But with the development of AI, who profits from dubbing could soon change.
Earlier this year, the UK-based startup ElevenLabs announced plans to clone the voice of Alain Dorval – the “voix de Stallone”, who from the 1970s onwards gave voice to Sylvester Stallone in some 30 films – in a new thriller, Armor, on Amazon. At the time, contracts did not state how an actor’s voice could be re-used: including to train AI software and create synthetic voices that ultimately could replace voice actors entirely. “It’s a kind of monster,” says Kuban. “If we don’t have protection, all kinds of jobs will be lost: after the movie industry, it will be the media industry, the music industry, all the cultural industries, and a society without culture will not be very good.”
When ChatGPT and ElevenLabs hit the market at the start of 2022, making AI a public-facing technology, “it was a theoretical threat, but not an immediate threat”, says Friedlander. But as the market has grown, including the release of the Israeli startup Deepdub, an AI-powered platform that offers dubbing and voiceover services for films, the problems with synthetic voice technologies have become impossible to ignore.
“If you steal my voice, you are stealing my identity,” says Daniele Giuliani, who voiced Jon Snow in the Game of Thrones, and works as a dubbing director. He is the president of the Italian dubbers’ association, ANAD, which recently fought for AI clauses in national contracts to protect voice actors from the indiscriminate and unauthorised use of their voices, and to prohibit the use of those voices in machine learning and deep data mining – a proposal that’s being used as a model in Spain. “This is very serious. I don’t want my voice to be used to say whatever someone wants.”
AI’s tentacles have had a global reach too. In India, where 72% of viewers prefer watching content in a different language, Sanket Mhatre, who voices Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 superhero film Green Lantern is concerned: “We’ve been signing contracts for donkey’s years now and most of these contracts have really big language about your voice being used in all perpetuity anywhere in the world,” says Mhatre. “Now with AI, signing something like this is essentially just signing away your career.”
Mhatre dubs more than 70-100 Hollywood movies into Hindi each year, as well as Chinese, Spanish, French films; web series, animated shows, anime, documentaries and audiobooks. “Every single day, I retell stories from some part of the world for the people of my country in their language, in their voice. It’s special,” he says. “It’s such an inclusive exercise. In India, if you’re not somebody who speaks English, it’s very easy to be knocked down and feel inferior. But when you are able to dub this cinema into Hindi, people now understand that cinema and can discuss it.”
He’s noticed a decline in the number of jobs dubbing corporate copy, training videos, and other quick turnaround information-led items, but he thinks his job is safe at the moment as it’s impossible for AI to adapt to cultural nuances or act with human emotion. “If the actor’s face is not visible on screen, or if you’re just seeing their back, in India, we might attempt to add an expression or a line to clarify the scene or provide more context.” When there are references to time travel movies in a sci-fi film, he explains, a dubber might list Bollywood titles instead.
But as AI learns more from voice actors and other humans, Mhatre is aware that it is a whole lot quicker and cheaper for companies to adopt this technology rather than hire dubbing actors, translators, and sound engineers.
“We need to stand against the robots,” says Kuban. “We need to use them for peaceful things, for maybe climate change or things like that, but we need to have actors on the screen.”
A remarkable documentary is providing insight into the propaganda found within Russian schools. Mr. Nobody Against Putin, directed by David Borenstein, premiered at the 2025 Sundance film festival in January, where it won the world cinema documentary special jury award.
The film was recorded over two years by Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, an events coordinator and videographer at a high school in Karabash, a heavily polluted town in central southern Russia. The documentary records the intensification of Kremlin-directed ultra-nationalist and pro-war propaganda within the Russian schooling system, which has intensified since the escalation of the war against Ukraine in February 2022.
Talankin makes clear his view that this approach to “education” represents a moral wrong, and he is very much on point with the writings of the key ethicists on the subject. American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, wrote that “education is both a tool of propaganda in the hands of dominant groups, and a means of emancipation for subject classes”.
Niebhur was writing about the education system in the US during the 1920s, when there was a widespread understanding that propaganda was used in these two ways. Talankin’s concern is that Russia has moved to a position of imbalance, where the “dominant groups” have too much influence and are using their power to corrupt the minds of children through disingenuous narratives about national servitude, sacrifice and conformity, coupled with the unsubtle threat that those who are not patriots are “parasites”.
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In their highly respected book Propaganda & Persuasion (1986), propaganda experts Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell state that “to analyse propaganda, one needs to be able to identify it”. This is a difficult task because propaganda thrives through symbols, the subliminal and in fictional works precisely because the audience is not conscious of it.
However, the creation of an environment that uses propaganda is also depends on who is given the oxygen of publicity and who is marginalised. These are the conditions under which ideological indoctrination occurs and power is achieved or maintained.
As such, a critical analyst of propaganda must assess the linguistic strategy, the information strategy, the eminence strategy (how to ensure that the target audience are watching, reading or listening to the desired content) and the staging strategy of the communicator. This can be remembered through the helpful L.I.E.S. mnemonic.
The trailer for Mr. Nobody versus Putin.
Talankin’s footage shows how Russian schools now promote distorted versions of European history. The well-trodden narrative that Ukraine has been taken over by neo-Nazis is referred to several times in lessons. Russian flags appear with greater frequency around the school as time goes on, and assembly time becomes an exercise in pledging allegiance to the fatherland.
Teachers are expected to read from scripts prepared for them by the ministry of education. Pupils then respond with choreographed answers – some even glancing down at notes under their desks. The children are told about how dreadful life in France and the UK is because of their reliance on Russian fossil fuels.
Interestingly, the Kremlin has asked that all of this be videoed and uploaded to a central database to ensure compliance with national regulations on what is taught in schools. Indeed, Talankin complains at one point that much of his time is now spent uploading the videos rather than actually teaching the students and helping them to be creative – as his job previously was.
Shared humanity
Talankin takes us on a tour of his city. He shows a pro-war rally that is broadly supported by the townsfolk. Or at least those in opposition dare not say anything or engage in an equivalent demonstration. He takes us to the civic library, theoretically a site of independent learning but which has been hijacked by these propaganda efforts.
Perhaps the most important moments of the documentary though are the snippets of critique and the sense of “knowing” that Talankin is keen to show. The young girl who jokingly tells her teacher to “blink twice if you’re lying”, and to which all her class then laugh. His interactions with other teachers who confide in him that they know that the propaganda is bullshit, but, worried for their status and prosperity, go along with it.
The propaganda is pretty poor though. It is clunky and obvious, and, while it might generate some short-term influence, it smacks of both arrogance and desperation on the part of the Kremlin. Indeed, it shows that there is no desire on the part of central government for Russian people to thrive intellectually.
Pavel Talankin was a school videographer in Russia. Courtesy of Pavel Talankin
This scenario is reminiscent of the end of the Soviet era, when communist propaganda continued to prevail, but few still believed it. Nevertheless, without a clear alternative to follow, or obvious alternative leader to guide them, most people continued to abide.
The most harrowing part of the documentary comes towards the end when Talankin provides an audio recording of the funeral of a local lad who has been killed in Ukraine. He did not dare film the funeral as this is a cultural faux pas, but the screams and wails of the mother as her son is laid to rest are piercing. The scene seems intended to bring our shared humanity to bare.
Talankin is a nice guy with intelligence and ethical fortitude. The kids are funny, charming and talented. The mother is doing what we would all do if we had lost a child to a violent death. As such, Mr. Nobody Against Putin might better be called Mr. Everybody Against Putin, as should be of grave concern to everyone that Russia’s education system is resorting to such techniques.
After decades of debate over how to honour the women who used to work in the city’s shirt factories, Derry has produced a sculpture of three giant spools of thread cast in bronze.
Ranging in height from 2 to 3.5 metres (6.5-11.5ft), the monuments loom over Harbour Square to recall an era when thousands of girls and women worked in dozens of factories that made the Northern Irish city a world leader in shirt production.
However, some former workers are aghast and say the decision to use abstract symbols rather than female figures occludes their role from history. “This gesture fell way short of what we hoped for – we feel airbrushed out of it,” Clare Moore told the BBC this week.
Before the official unveiling last month, several former workers staged a protest and held a banner saying “these factory girls say no”. There had been no proper consultation and the bronze spools did not accurately resemble the ones they used in the factories, they said.
Derry city and Strabane district council had hoped the £187,000 design would draw a line under a troubled 20-year stop-start quest to represent the city’s industrial heritage with public art. The council called the artwork a “fitting tribute” and said it had fully engaged with the former workers.
Quotes from former factory shirt workers resemble a thread from one of the spools. Photograph: Chris Wilson
Chris Wilson, the artist behind the sculpture, said at least two years of consultations included a day-long workshop that showed a model of the artwork to dozens of former workers, who at that meeting raised no objections.
“They all seemed onboard with the idea,” Wilson told the Guardian. “I’ve never worked on a project that had such an extensive and transparent process.”
The sculptures are not figurative but “almost anthropomorphic” in suggesting a group of people, with textures and shadows to evoke memory, he said. “The factories are all gone but what came across to me, in talks with the ladies, was their memories and recollections and friendships.”
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One of the bronze spools emits what appears to be a loose thread around the base but is in fact quotes from some former workers, Wilson said. “I’ve been told that public art is like sport. Everybody has opinion and is entitled to have an opinion.”
JD Twitch, one half of the celebrated Scottish DJ and production duo Optimo, has been diagnosed with a brain tumour which he has been told is untreatable.
The musician, real name Keith McIvor, announced the news in a post on Instagram. He said: “My symptoms weren’t immediately diagnosed, and my health declined very rapidly over just a few weeks. Because of how rapidly everything progressed I haven’t been able to share this news personally with everyone I care about so this feels the clearest and kindest way to let you know what’s happening.”
McIvor had cancelled several recent gigs as he underwent testing. He added: “I am currently trying to process this news and prioritising spending precious time with the people I love.”
Optimo, with McIvor alongside Jonnie Wilkes (AKA JG Wilkes), are icons of Scottish and indeed British dance music culture, with their punkish and passionate attitude to DJing resulting in sets of astonishing power. Hopping from techno to disco, industrial to soft rock, their sets cover huge stylistic ground, and their weekly Optimo Espacio residency at Glasgow’s Sub Club between 1997 and 2010 became a pilgrimage for global dance fans.
McIvor, left, with Jonnie Wilkes AKA JG Wilkes. Photograph: Ross Giilmore
The pair are musicians in their own right, creating ambitious remixes for artists including Florence + the Machine and Manic Street Preachers; McIvor also remixed the likes of Primal Scream, Hot Chip and Nightmares on Wax.
Optimo also created acclaimed DJ mix albums such as How to Kill the DJ (Part 2), Optimo Present Psyche Out and an entry in the mix series by London nightclub Fabric. They also founded a label, Optimo Music, which spawned various spinoff labels.
McIvor posted a link to a messageboard for fans to share messages of support.
Keith McIvor, aka JD Twitch, posted news of the diagnosis on social media.
One half of legendary Glasgow clubbing duo Optimo has revealed he has been diagnosed with an untreatable brain tumour.
Keith McIvor, aka JD Twitch, posted news of the diagnosis on social media.
Along with Jonnie Wilkes he ran Optimo Espacio – one of the city’s most loved club nights – for 13 years between 1997 and 2010 at the Sub Club venue.
McIvor said it had been an honour to make a living doing something he loved.
He wrote: “Following extensive tests I’ve been diagnosed with a brain tumour and I have been told my condition is untreatable.
“As you can imagine, I am currently trying to process this news and prioritising spending precious time with the people I love.”
The DJ added the diagnosis had progressed rapidly, and his health had worsened very quickly.
He said he truly appreciated “everyone’s love and concern, it means the world to me” and that he trusted Wilkes would continue making music under the Optimo name.
He wrote: “Jonnie and I have been lucky enough to play our music at countless clubs and festivals throughout the world and it has been one of the greatest honours of my life to make a career out of something I love.
“We have connected with so many beautiful souls through our shared passion for music.”
Wilkes to continue Optimo Espacio
McIvor was originally from Edinburgh but moved to Glasgow to attend university, which was when he began to DJ.
In Edinburgh he established famed night Pure in the 1990s, before setting up Optimo in 1997 with his friend Wilkes, who uses the name JD Wilkes when performing.
The night was known for its eclectic music and proved hugely popular, while the pair continued to tour and release music after the club night concluded.
Wilkes wrote on social media it was “painful to put into words” how he felt.
He said: “Keith and I have been through so much together in our 28-year partnership. We are connected in a way that perhaps only he and I can understand.
“I do know however, that if you ever heard us play together then you will have realised how deep that connection is.
“I love you Keith. You inspired me like nobody else could and I’m so proud of what we’ve done together.
“I will continue Optimo (Espacio) with you always in my heart. The music will speak for both of us. Your anarchic spirit and your ferocious energy is all around me.”
Sitaare Zameen Par Worldwide Box Office Day 13 (Photo Credit –Facebook)
Aamir Khan’s Sitaare Zameen Par has turned out to be a pleasant surprise at the worldwide box office. After the debacle of Laal Singh Chaddha, expectations were minimal from his latest comedy-drama. But it has exceeded all projections by comfortably entering the 200 crore club. Yesterday, on day 13, it surpassed Salman Khan’s Sikandar to become Bollywood’s 4th highest-grossing film globally and crossed five other Bollywood biggies. Keep reading for a detailed report!
How much did Sitaare Zameen Par earn at the worldwide box office in 13 days?
The comedy-drama displayed impressive growth over its second weekend. On the second Monday, there was an expected drop, but on Tuesday, it remained rock-steady, all thanks to discounted ticket rates. Yesterday, on the second Wednesday, there was a noticeable drop, but the overall collection is good. In India, it has earned 132.53 crore net so far. Adjusting for GST, it stands at 156.38 crore gross.
Overseas, the estimated collection stands at 56 crore gross. Combining this with the Indian gross, Sitaare Zameen Par’s 13-day worldwide box office collection stands at 212.38 crore gross.
Box office breakdown:
India net – 132.53 crores
India gross – 156.38 crores
Overseas gross – 56 crores
Worldwide gross – 212.38 crores
Sitaare Zameen Par becomes Bollywood’s 4th highest-grosser of 2025!
With 212.38 crores, Sitaare Zameen Par has now surpassed Sikandar (211.34 crores) to become Bollywood’s 4th highest-grossing film of 2025 globally. The next target is Raid 2 (242.56 crores).
Take a look at the top 5 Bollywood grossers of 2025 globally:
Chhaava – 827.06 crores
Housefull 5 – 302.5 crores
Raid 2 – 242.57 crores
Sitaare Zameen Par – 212.38 crores
Sikandar – 211.34 crores
Crosses Gangubai Kathiawadi and 4 other films
Also, other than Sikandar, the Aamir Khan starrer surpassed five Bollywood films on its 13th day. The list includes Gangubai Kathiawadi (208.17 crores), Chhichhore (208.42 crores), Kaabil (209.5 crores), Don 2 (210.8 crores), and Hichki (210.81 crores).
More about the film
Directed by R. S. Prasanna, Sitaare Zameen Par also stars Genelia D’Souza, Aroush Datta, Gopi Krishnan Varma, and others. It was produced by Aamir Khan Productions. The film was theatrically released on 20 June 2025.
Stay tuned to Koimoi for more box office updates!
Must Read: Hari Hara Veera Mallu Trailer Impact At Box Office Day 1: Pawan Kalyan Is In The Mood To Break His 3-Year-Old Opening Day Record!
The BBC has said it was wrong to believe the punk duo Bob Vylan were “suitable for live streaming with appropriate mitigations” for their performance at Glastonbury festival, despite ranking them as “high risk” before the event.
In a statement signalling there would be repercussions for those behind the failure, the corporation said: “We fully understand the strength of feeling regarding Bob Vylan’s live appearance at Glastonbury on the BBC.
“Bob Vylan were deemed high risk following a risk assessment process applied to all acts appearing at Glastonbury. Seven acts including Bob Vylan were included in this category and they were all deemed suitable for live streaming with appropriate mitigations.
“Prior to Glastonbury, a decision was taken that compliance risks could be mitigated in real time on the live stream – through the use of language or content warnings – without the need for a delay. This was clearly not the case.
“During the performance, the live stream was monitored in line with the agreed compliance protocols and a number of issues were escalated. Warnings appeared on the stream on two occasions and the editorial team took the decision not to cut the feed. This was an error.
“Given the failings that have been acknowledged we are taking actions to ensure proper accountability for those found to be responsible for those failings in the live broadcast. We will not comment further on those processes at this time.
“Furthermore, as a result we will make immediate changes to live streaming music events. “Any music performances deemed high risk will now not be broadcast live or streamed live.”
Bobby Vylan, whose real name is Pascal Robinson-Foster, led chants of “Death, death to the IDF”, referring to the Israel Defense Forces, at Glastonbury last Saturday.
The BBC initially placed a warning on screen for viewers, but later said it regretted not intervening by pulling the live stream. The BBC director general, Tim Davie, was at the festival in the hours after the set and ordered the content not to feature in any further BBC coverage, but technical issues meant it remained on the iPlayer for several hours.
Getty Images
